The Sage of Discovery

On January 1st, 1908 Ernest Shackleton’s ship, Nimrod, departed from New Zealand’s Lyttleton Harbor. It’s destination? Antarctica. After being towed 1,650 miles by steamboat, Nimrod reached Antarctic ice, and Shackleton’s team began their push to be the first humans to reach the South Pole.

They never made it. Grappling with poor weather conditions and supply shortages, Shackleton and his men missed their mark by roughly a hundred miles. However, aside from gathering valuable information about conditions in Antarctica, the Nimrod expedition produced one notable success; on January 16, 1909, a group of Shackleton’s explorers discovered the approximate location of the South Magnetic Pole.

But lately, Shackleton’s expedition has produced a fruitful discovery of a different nature. During his 1908 expedition, Shackleton’s group set up camp on Ross Island — a camp he and his crew abandoned hastily in the March of ‘09. Although Shackleton’s 1908 mission produced no human casualties, it did include the loss of two cases of McKinlay and Co. whiskey (and some other supplies), left behind at the camp. In 2006, this whiskey was found buried beneath Shackleton’s Ross Island hut.

Shackleton's Hut at Cape Royds on Ross Island from Wikipedia

Now the New Zealand Antarctic Heritage Trust plan to launch an expedition of their own to cut the crates of century-old whiskey from the ice. This could be a boon for Whyte and Mackay, the distillers who own McKinlay and Co. The company sees the extraction as a potential means to sample or recreate the now extinct blend of scotch.

Cheers to that.

[story from BBC NEWS via npr]

For more information see An Antarctic Time Line and “Ernest Shackleton” on Wikipedia